I Have 10,000 SSS Rank Villains In My System Space

Chapter 485: The Real Questions

"And Selena. You know she used to pray for you? Your entire childhood. Pray for you to gain mana. Pray for you to be able to do the things everyone else could do. Pray for you to stop suffering. I am absolutely certain she would be even happier than me seeing you now. Cried in happyness more then i could ever.. And Celestia. And your sister Nova? They would never say it. They are total payco idiots theyy would never admit it. But I know. I know they were dammn happy too." Her voice became quieter, but somehow even more painful.

"But no... you wouldn’t know." Merisa shook her head, her wet eyes locked onto his face. She wasn’t crying. She refused to cry. Yet the wetness in her eyes had become impossible to hide now, her emotions pushing harder and harder against the control she was desperately trying to maintain.

"You wouldn’t know since you never even tried. You never sat down and talked to them. You never stayed long enough to hear what they felt. You never gave them a chance to tell you whether they were happy or sad, whether they missed you, whether they hated themselves, whether they regretted everything. You decided all of that yourself and walked away before anyone could say otherwise." Her voice trembled before suddenly becoming stronger.

"And today... today you defeated a Supreme. A Supreme, Razeal. Do you even understand what that means? You are standing on your own feet. Your head held high. You are no longer that boy everyone pitied. No longer that boy everyone looked down on. You are a talent beyond talents, standing at the very peak of this generation, and I can’t even begin to explain how happy I am. How proud I am." Her lips trembled slightly.

"After everything... all I want to do right now is come over there, hug you, put my hand on your head and tell you how proud I am of you. Tell you that you did it. Tell you that you survived. Tell you that you became everything they said you never could." A bitter smile appeared on her face.

"But would you let me? No. You wouldn’t. You wouldn’t let me and you wouldn’t let anyone else either. You won’t feel those things because you won’t let the people who feel them for you get close enough to you. You keep pushing everyone away before they can even try."

"Because none of you deserve to participate in my happiness or my life." Razeal’s voice came out cold immediately. "Did you forget what all of you did to me?"

Merisa’s expression tightened instantly. "Stop self-pitying yourself." She totally yelled.. The words came out so suddenly even Sofia looked up.

"What happened was wrong. The worst thing that could have happened. The worst mistake imaginable. But stop fucking throwing everything away because of it. You know we loved you. We still do." For the first time genuine disbelief appeared on Razeal’s face.

"Self-pitying myself? Is that what you think this is? Wow... just wow. That’s probably the worst thing you could have said. How dare you reduce everything I felt into that? My anger? My pain? My life? Everything that happened..."

But before he could continue, Merisa cut him off.

"YOU ARE SELF-PITYING YOURSELF." Her voice exploded.

"YOU FUCKING ARE. Look at the way you talk about your own life. Look at how little value you place on yourself. Look at how easily you talk about dying. What happened was wrong. It affected all of us. Every single one of us. None of us wanted it. None of us. And all of us regret it more than you can imagine." Her voice slowly became rougher.

"You think you’re the only one who suffered? I lived years wondering whether my son was alive or dead. Wondering if I was the reason he died somewhere. Wondering if I destroyed my own child. Do you know what kind of life that is? It was empty. The only thing that kept me going was believing maybe I wasn’t wrong. Maybe my principles weren’t wrong. Maybe you were alive somewhere far away. I hated it but I accepted it. But now even that is gone. That final excuse. That final belief. That final thing holding me together. It’s broken. All that’s left now is guilt. Sadness. Regret. And wondering what the fuck I did." Her voice weakened.

"And Selena... she never smiled after what happened. Never. She stopped caring about things. Training. Achievements. Everything. I know because I watched her. Every time she smiled it never reached her eyes."

"And Nova?" Merisa suddenly continued, not even giving him time to retreat back behind that cold expression of his. Her wet eyes remained fixed on him, stubbornly refusing to look away despite how much they burned.

"Do you know what she did after you left? Do you know what happened to her?" A bitter laugh escaped her. "She went crazyier then she already was.. The kind where a person loses themselves chasing something impossible because they refuse to accept reality." She shook her head.

"Libraries. Ancient tombs. Forbidden records. Secret portals. Forgotten ruins. Stupid witches and every piece of nonsense knowledge she could get her hands on. Anything that even remotely mentioned bringing back the dead. She searched all of it. Years, Razeal. Years." Her voice became rougher.

"And when she wasn’t trying to find ways to bring back the dead, she was trying to find you. She stopped caring about things that used to matter to her. Training. Strength. Responsibilities. She left everything behind chasing after someone she wasn’t even sure was alive anymore." Her trembling finger pointed directly at him.

"You have absolutely no idea how much people love you. Or maybe you do. Maybe deep down you’ve always known and you simply don’t want to believe it because believing it hurts less than accepting how complicated everything became or was. Maybe you know and just don’t care anymore." She looked him up and down, seeing the way he carried himself, seeing the exhaustion hidden behind his eyes, seeing the way he spoke about his own life as if it was worth nothing.

"So stop hurting yourself. Stop torturing yourself. Stop pretending your life has no value. What happened was horrible. The worst thing that could have happened. We know that. We all know that. But don’t do this to yourself. Don’t take what happened and turn it into a knife you keep stabbing yourself with over and over again."

"So do what?" Razeal asked, his voice calm again, though everyone could hear the anger still sitting underneath it.

"Come with us." Merisa answered immediately. There wasn’t even a second of hesitation. "You know we didn’t want it. You know we never meant for any of this to happen. It was a horrible misunderstanding. A terrible one. A disgusting one. But it was never intentional." Her voice trembled.

"We love you. We care about you. And even if you don’t want to do it for us, then do it for yourself. You’ll never be free if you keep carrying all of this forever. Just forgive us. Hate us if you need to. Punish us if you need to. Torture us if that’s what you think we deserve. We’ll accept it. I’ll accept it. Whatever punishment you think fits my crimes, I’ll take it." Her wet eyes never left his.

"But please... please forgive us. Please stop carrying all this hatred by yourself and come with us."

For a moment there was only silence before a scoff escaped Razeal’s mouth.

"Forgive you?" The words came out dripping with disbelief. "Forgive you? Why the fuck would I do that?"

The hatred inside his voice was obvious.

Merisa’s expression tightened immediately.

"That hate has blinded you." She pointed her finger towards him as of pointing to thing she want him to see.

"Wake up and look at reality. None of us wanted to hurt you. None of us. Not me. Not Nova. Not Selena. Not even celestia.. Not anyone. We never hated you. That was never true. Not once. We love you. I love you." The words came out almost painfully.

"Forgiveness is the only thing that will free you from this. Stop letting this hatred destroy you. Stop letting it consume everything. Come with me. I promise I’ll accept whatever punishment you want. But I can’t..." Her voice finally cracked.

"I fucking can’t keep looking at you like this."

Then a chuckle almost escaped Razeal’s mouth.

A real one.

Not because it was funny.

Because the irony was.

"Forgiveness, huh?" His expression twisted strangely before anger suddenly flashed through his eyes. "You know what’s funny?" His voice rose.

"I would’ve." The words instantly froze everyone present.

Merisa’s eyes widened. Sofia stopped breathing. Even Nerrisa’s expression changed.

"What?" Merisa asked quietly.

Razeal pointed directly at her. "I would’ve fucking forgiven you." His voice shook with anger.

"I knew. I knew none of you actually wanted to hurt me. I knew none of you woke up one day and decided to ruin my life. I’m not stupid nor naive. All those years alone I thought about it. Again and again and again. I imagined every possibility. I understood what happened. I understood you were all just too fucking stupid to realize what you were doing." His finger remained pointed at her.

"So don’t stand there acting like I never understood. I did. I was prepared to forgive. Especially you." His eyes narrowed. "And Nova."

"Because I knew." Razeal’s voice came out sharp, years of emotions finally slipping through the cracks he had spent so long building around himself. His crimson eyes remained fixed on Merisa.

"Because I knew for you it was punishment. I knew you thought you were doing the right thing. I knew you didn’t actually want to hurt me. You just didn’t know. Even after everything I went through, every night and every day alone, things I never told anyone and things nobody will ever know, I still thought I would forgive you." His jaw tightened.

"Because you were my family. We we were a Family.. Because I knew you misunderstood everything. Because I knew you believed you were right. Yes, I was angry. I was fucking angry. But at the end of it all I knew I would’ve forgiven you. I would’ve."

Merisa froze completely. Her wet eyes widened as she stared at him. She had prepared herself for only and only hatred. She had prepared herself for rejection which she knew would for sure. She had prepared herself for him saying he would never forgive her. But this? This completely shattered her expectations.

"You did?" The words escaped her lips almost automatically. Genuine confusion spread across her face.

"Then why?" Her voice became smaller. "Why didn’t you?"

Razeal laughed, not because anything was funny but because the disappointment had long since become absurd.

"I had thought..." Razeal’s voice came out lower this time, but somehow it hurt far more than when he was shouting. The anger was still there, but now it was buried beneath something much worse. Disappointment. The kind of disappointment that only came after hope had died. His crimson eyes remained locked on Merisa’s face.

"I had thought after you all punished me... after I was gone... after years passed and none of you knew whether I was alive or dead..." He laughed once, a hollow laugh completely devoid of humor. "At least one of you would’ve realized the mistake." His jaw tightened.

"At least one of you would’ve sat down and thought about it." His eyes narrowed slightly.

"But no one did." The words came out sharp.

"Not one of you." He slowly shook his head.

"You lost me there." The disappointment inside his voice deepened.

"You disappointed me." Then he paused for a moment before shrugging lightly.

"But fine." His expression became strangely calm. "I wouldn’t have cared about that forever. I would’ve accepted it eventually."

A bitter smile appeared on his face. "Because I thought something else would happen."

His gaze remained fixed on Merisa as if forcing her to hear every single word.

"I thought maybe when I finally came back..." His voice lowered further.

"After all those years. After years of not knowing whether I was alive or dead. After years of believing I might’ve died somewhere alone." His throat tightened slightly.

"When I finally stood in front of my mother and sister again..." For the first time, genuine pain appeared in his eyes.

"I thought everything else would stop mattering." The silence around them became heavy. Even Nerrisa had stopped smiling completely now.

"I thought you’d forget everything for a moment." Razeal continued. "Forget the accusations. Forget the punishment. Forget the crime you believed I committed." His voice trembled slightly with restrained emotion.

"I thought you’d come running toward me." His eyes became distant as if looking at a memory that never happened. "With tears in your eyes." A painful laugh escaped him.

"I thought you’d hug me." Another pause. "I thought you’d be happy." The words became rough. "Happy that I was alive." His eyes burned.

"Not dead." He looked directly at Merisa. "Tell me that you’d tell me you missed me." His voice softened.

"Tell me you never wanted any of that to happen." His hands clenched into fists.

"Ask me where I’d been." Another pause. "Ask me if I was okay." Another. "Ask me if I had eaten properly."

Another. "Ask me why I never came home." The disappointment became almost unbearable.

"So many things." His voice lowered to almost a whisper.

"So many questions a mother should ask." Then his eyes hardened again.

"Show me somebody cared." The words landed heavily.

"At least make me feel needed." His jaw tightened.

"Make me feel loved." Another pause.

"Make me feel cherished." The bitterness inside his voice deepened.

"Because even if I had committed that crime..." His eyes narrowed. "Which I didn’t." He stressed every word.

"Even if I had." His gaze never left hers. "A mother who truly loved her son would still run toward him after believing he was dead for five years." His voice became colder.

"A sister who truly loved her brother would’ve done the same." Then he took a step forward.

"But what did both of you do?" Razeal asked, and somehow those words hurt more than all his shouting before. There was no rage exploding from him now. No screaming. No loss of control. Just disappointment. Pure disappointment. The kind that only appeared after hope had died. His crimson eyes remained fixed on Merisa’s face, not allowing her to look away.

"What did both of you do?" he repeated.

"When Nova came to me, did she ask where I’d been? Did she ask if I was alive? Did she ask if I was safe all those years? Did she ask what happened to me? Did she ask how I survived?" He laughed bitterly.

"No." His jaw tightened. "The first thing she did was tell me to apologize to Selena. Apologize first. Then maybe she’d protect me. Then maybe all of you would greet me." His voice dripped with disbelief. "Protect me?" He repeated the words slowly, as if even now he couldn’t believe them. "In front of the entire Empire." His eyes narrowed.

"Humiliating me. Looking at me like I was some stranger she had just met. Looking at me like I was some criminal she was forced to deal with." His voice became quieter. "Not her brother." The silence around them deepened.

"With not a single tear in her eyes." His gaze lowered for a moment before returning to Merisa.

"Not one question." Another pause.

"Not one." The disappointment inside his voice became heavier with every word. "No ’Where were you?’ No ’Are you okay?’ No ’What happened to you?’ No ’I thought you were dead.’" He laughed again, but there was nothing pleasant about it.

"Nothing." His hands slowly clenched. "As if she didn’t care who I was. As if she didn’t care where I came from. As if she didn’t care what I might’ve gone through." Then suddenly the disappointment cracked and anger slipped through.

"Who the fuck is she to protect me?" His voice rose. "Who the fuck gave her that right?" His eyes burned. "Protect me?" The words came out like an insult. "After disappearing from my life. After doing nothing. After treating me like a stranger." His breathing became heavier. "Who gave her the right to stand in front of me and act like she was doing me a favor?"

"And protect me of all??"

"Who does she think i ammm."

"Am not a fucking nobody that needs anyone’s protection."

Then his eyes moved back toward Merisa.

"And as for you?"

The words were quieter.

Far quieter.

Which somehow made them worse.

Merisa felt her chest tighten immediately.

Razeal stared directly into her eyes.

"Tell me." His voice remained calm.

"What was the first thing you did when I came back?"

Merisa instinctively opened her mouth.

Nothing came out.

Because she already knew where this was going.

"No." Razeal shook his head before she could speak.

"Actually forget that." A bitter smile appeared. "You didn’t even come see me." The words landed heavily.

"A son you thought was dead for five years." His voice slowly became rougher. "Five years." He emphasized every word. "A son you believed died somewhere." His eyes narrowed.

"A son who suddenly returned alive." Another step forward.

"Back in the Empire." Another. "Back in front of everyone." His jaw tightened. "And you didn’t even come see my face."

Merisa visibly flinched.

The words struck exactly where they were meant to.

"And don’t you dare tell me you didn’t know." His voice became sharper.

"I’m completely sure you knew." His eyes never left hers.

"You knew I was back."

The disappointment returned.

"So what was it?" His expression hardened.

"Did you not have the strength to look at me?" His voice lowered.

"To look at the face of a son you thought was dead?" Another pause. "A son who might’ve gone through things you couldn’t even imagine?" The words came out one after another without mercy.

"Did you never wonder what happened to me?" His jaw clenched. "Did you never wonder if I suffered?" Another pause. "Did you never wonder if I was scared?" His eyes burned. "Did you never wonder if I was alone?" Every question felt heavier than the last.

Merisa’s face had already gone pale. She wanted to answer. She wanted to explain. She wanted to tell him that wasn’t true.

That she had wondered.

Every day.

Every night.

Every minute.

For years.

Specially that week.

But under his gaze, the words wouldn’t come. Not because she didn’t have answers.

Because every answer sounded meaningless.

Sofia stood silently on the side, her eyes fixed on Razeal’s face. Her heart hurt listening to him. For the first time she felt like she wasn’t seeing the Razeal she knew. Not the fearless one. Not the one who constantly provoked people stronger than himself. Not the proudful one, strong one. The arrogant man who does make you trust he doesn’t feel any pain.

This was something else. These were wounds. Old wounds. Questions he had buried so deeply that nobody had ever seen them before. Questions that had sat inside him for years without answers. Questions that probably haunted him during lonely nights when nobody was there. The sadness in her eyes deepened as she looked at his side profile. Because she could tell. These weren’t things he had prepared to say. These were things he had carried inside his heart for so long that once they started coming out, they wouldn’t stop.

"And do you want me to remind you what happened when you finally did show your face?" Razeal asked quietly.

Merisa’s eyes instictively wanted to lower on that but she forced to look into his eyes. Totally awakre what she had did even if she had reasons.

"You slapped me." The words came out softly.

Not angrily.

Not loudly.

And somehow that made them infinitely worse.

"You slapped me across the face." His eyes remained fixed on hers.

"That was your greeting." A bitter smile appeared on his lips.

"A mother seeing her supposedly dead son alive after five years?" The smile disappeared.

"And the first thing she did..." His voice became colder.

"...was slap him."

The silence afterward was unbearable.

"That was what I got."

The disappointment inside those words pierced deeper than any hatred ever could.

Merisa felt as if something was crushing her chest. Because the worst part was that he wasn’t lying.

Everything he said had happened. She remembered why she had done it.

She remembered her fear.

She didn’t do it for no reason.

She was just angry and frustrated as watching him throw his life away.

She remembered all of it.

But now standing here now, hearing it from his perspective, hearing how it looked through his eyes...

None of those reasons mattered anymore.

None of them changed what happened.

None of them changed what he felt.

And suddenly she understood something that terrified her.

The slap wasn’t what he remembered most.

The slap wasn’t what hurt him.

What hurt him was everything before it.

The waiting.

The absence.

The fact that she never came.

The fact that she didn’t run to him.

The fact that she didn’t ask.

The fact that she didn’t hug him.

The fact that she wasn’t there.

And realizing that made the pain in her chest even worse.

Merisa’s wet eyes trembled violently as she looked at him. She wanted to explain. She wanted to tell him he was wrong. She wanted to tell him she had thought about him every day. That she had suffered. That she had regretted everything. That she had been terrified. That she had wanted to see him.

But not a single word came out.

For the first time since this conversation began, the Virelan Matriarch stood completely speechless, because every explanation she had sounded pathetic compared to the disappointment she saw in her son’s eyes.

——